Julie Blair tells us all something we already know:
Spanking creates aggressiveness in children of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, yet the practice continues to be used as a means of discipline with even very young children at home and in school scenarios, reports Elizabeth T. Gershoff, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas in Austin.
Hitting children teaches them to be aggressive, Gershoff concluded after looking at more than 17,000 children from around the nation, in a study outlined in the July issue of the journal Child Development Perspectives.
Spanking “is bad for kids,” Gershoff said in an interview. Instead, parents and teachers should reward children for positive behavior, she said. “If you give the kids who are well-behaved … attention … it extinguishes bad behavior pretty quickly.”
Then, Blair teaches something we might not be aware of:
Corporal punishment is still allowed in 19 states in K-12 schools, and more than some 200,000 children are paddled each year with wooden paddles at least 2 feet long, Gershoff said.
As of 2008, only three states allowed spanking in child-care settings—Idaho, Louisiana, and South Carolina—but she fears the practice is used illegally elsewhere.
Nineteen states still permit the paddling of children in their schools. Wow.
Spanking doesn’t work as a deterrent to bad behavior. In fact, it sends the wrong message: “It’s OK for me (parent, teacher, peer) to hurt you (child); to put fear into you; to demean and humiliate you.” There is nothing right about that message. Nothing. Spanking is bullying, plain and simple. And readers of this blog know that bullying is never right, always wrong, and completely unacceptable.